The performance artist and painter was drinking coffee and looking relaxed and happy when The Phuket News dropped by his studio ahead of last Saturday’s live-art performance at Mom Tri’s VR Gallery.
In a sign of his increased fame, he’s currently working on a series of four paintings for a local Korean restaurant – a commission he received on the strength of his performances on TV.
Speaking ahead of his performance at the VR Gallery, he said that he felt no nerves and was going to create around five paintings on the night.
“I’ll be doing a little bit of live performance, but I’ll mostly be painting.”
As it transpired Romadon did do both, yet forwent the traditional method of applying paint.
Romadon’s performance began as the famous silver statue. He was then bound, gagged and cocooned with gaffer tape by a supposed member of the audience (actually one of his friends from the Art Village in Rawai).
Romadon swayed and rocked until finally toppling to the the canvas, which was one large 10 metre sheet piece of cotton. In breaking himself free, he released a secreted stack of paint, which poured onto the fabric, and the ‘painting’ began...
He created five pieces in all, and separated each into 2 metre lengths strips. The work was abstract, but seemed to touch upon political instabilities; birth, death, light and darkness. When Romadon had finished splashing, pouring, flicking and rolling on the canvases, he suddenly picked up the final piece, wrapped himself in it and ran to the VR Gallery to personally hang each and every one.
Once his work was completed, he literally collapsed on the gallery floor, all the while dripping with paint.
Before his appearance on Thailand’s Got Talent TV show, Romadon had a small following in Nai Harn, where he lives and works, and could often be seen standing absolutely still in various places around the island as the ‘silver statue’.
Nowadays, he says, owing to the effect of appearing on national TV and perhaps more importantly YouTube, he gets recognised and approached a lot more, wherever he is.
“Everybody, including fisherman and manual workers, comes and talks to me about [the live performances] and wished me well.”
Romadon said that ever since his first televised performance in August, people had been very supportive, many of whom he said had never been interested in art before.
“It’s great that it gave them a chance to think about art it in a different way.”
Romadon’s unique, passionate, and rather odd televised live performances certainly elicited questions from the audience, many of which probably couldn’t be answered.
Romadon himself points to a representation of emotion and says that it was great that so many people were interested in it, but added that whether they understood it or not was not the ‘main’ thing.
“Whether they understand the concept or not is not important. If they like it, the colour, the shape, the form, then that is what is important.”
He likened it to the simple unconditional appreciation that babies express, “they’re not interested in the concept, just if they like it or not.”
People like Romadon because he’s just a likeable person; unpretentious, honest and deep. Whereas perhaps before the show people were entertained and intrigued by his ‘art’, now people seem to be genuinely interested.
Romadon says that this is because many people now see him like a ‘friend’, “It’s like I opened up my life for them.”
Now when people see him perform as the ‘silver statue’, they are just as likely to want to come up and have their photograph taken, but the only difference is that people now know who he is.
“Many people come up and say ‘It’s Romadon’, before people just saw the [silver statue] but know people know about me like a friend. It’s good,” he says with a smile.